Healing the Wound?

An interesting topic has been broached a few times in the past couple weeks.

Has the birth of Ava helped my healing process?

This is a really difficult question to answer. I have replied "yes" to those who have asked simply because I don't know how to adequately explain to them why I don't think it has.

Am I truly in love? Of course! Am I grateful that Avaleen is here and healthy and wakes me up with her cries at night? Absolutely! Has she healed the wound caused by the death of Rosalynn? No.

Yes, the empty arms and nursery are full, however, to say the birth of my second daughter has helped heal the wound of Rosie's death is like putting a band aide on an amputated leg and saying it is healed. Of course my life seems more full, but my first born is still gone, and with her, that piece of my heart will always be missing until we are reunited in heaven.

I have love in my heart enough for both of my girls, just like any mother with multiple children. I just pray that no one thinks that my rainbow "negates the ravages of the storm that preceded it". There is a family member missing still. Her presence will be missed at every holiday, every family function, and every milestone that Ava hits we will have missed the opportunity to watch Rosie hit the same milestones. No matter how many children we have, there will always be one less face missing from the family photos, one less sporting event to attend, one less graduation, and one less chance for Foster to walk his daughter down the isle.

If anything, this new rainbow journey we are on has reopened the wound WIDE. I have cried more in the past 2 weeks than I have the past 6 months over Rosalynn's passing. How screwed up is it that I had to bring Ava to the cemetery to "introduce" her to her older sister? I should have been introducing them here in our home when we brought Ava home from the NICU. However, the life of a Baby Loss Mother and her family will never be that of a "normal" family's. My daughter will be raised to "know" a sister she has never met, she will have books like "Someone came Before You" along with "Goodnight Moon", and she will attend balloon releases and Memorial Walks on October 15th.

So has Ava's birth healed any of the wound from Rosie? I guess the short answer is no.

A Week with Ava!!

Life has been so busy lately, I feel there aren't enough hours in the day, and hence why the last blog I wrote was over a week ago.

Avaleen is home. She has been home for a whole week now. Foster and I have been thoroughly enjoying our new little addition to our family. Ava is such a content little baby, and I am just waiting for the ball to drop. She doesn't fuss much, she doesn't cry unless we are changing her diaper, and she is happy just hanging out. When she is awake, she cracks us up with her goofy faces.

There have been a LOT of firsts in the past week. We took her to church...I know, I know, people may be mad at me for taking my 5 week preemie out in public, HOWEVER, our faith is what has kept us sane and strong over the past 18 months, and we felt as if we NEEDED to bring her there. Foster and I both got pretty emotional. We had been praying for over 2 years, and we were finally holding our precious daughter. To avoid too many people poking their fingers into her car seat, I held her in my Moby wrap to keep her close to me and away from all the germs.

We also took her out to see her big sister. This is when I lost it. I know the hormones are still wacky, but I think in the cemetery it finally hit me how sad and happy I was, how grateful, but also still a little resentful I am. How I should be introducing our newborn to our 18 month old daughter, and not to her gravestone. It was all really overwhelming, and I could no longer hold back the tears. I started crying.

We have had TONS of visitors. It was really hectic here the first weekend she was home, but things are starting to slow down a bit. It is nice to be able to hang out with Foster and Ava and enjoy being a family. Foster is absolutely in LOVE! Ava has him wrapped around her finger.

The breastfeeding is going AMAZINGLY! I am such a cow! The lactation specialist was warning me to not get upset if Ava didn't latch until closer to her due date, but just like how fast she graduated the NICU, she has amazed us with her eating skills too! The 4th day in the NICU, we tried. By the 3rd try, she was latched and fed for 10 minutes. I still supplement with pumped breast milk in a bottle, b/c she is still small and gets tired after about 10-15 minutes. It takes more energy for her to breast feed, so I usually give her an additional .5-1 oz of milk after she tuckers out.

Nights are going well. There are 3 positive things about having a baby int he NICU the first 6 days of life. 1.) Ava came home on a schedule! She is on a feeding schedule of 12-3-6-9 around the clock. This has allowed for about 2-2.5 hour stretches of sleep for Foster and I and the occasional 3 hour stretch! 2.) since she was hooked up to all the monitors and checked and monitored for 6 days, if there was any underlying heart of respiratory problem that may not have been picked up in the regular nursery, there is a great chance they would have picked up on it. 3.) she slept by herself in the incubator. This is great because she doesn't need to be held to fall asleep or stay asleep. I was TERRIFIED that she would be a baby who needed me to hold her in bed to fall asleep, and as a Baby Loss Mom, I have heard all the nightmare stories of smothering babies while co sleeping. She sleeps in a bassinet right next to our bed, and I can see into it, and it works perfectly!

OK OK...now onto what you REALLY want...the pictures of my beautiful baby girl that does NOT include tubes:-)

In her Little Sister outfit getting ready to go home!!

my sweet baby girl!!

one of her MANY goofy expressions when she is awake!

first time in her swing!

LOVES her daddy!!

our little fur-babysitter. Reagan is absolutely IN LOVE!

UH OH folks! I have a thumb sucker!!!

Ava with Rosie....tear! sorry this is a bad pic..it is w/ my phone:-)

Rosie's First Heavenly Birthday Post

I know, I know, this is way long overdue, along with my kitchen remodel post. But, as I mentioned before, it was all about getting motivated to empty my memory card. Having a 16MB card is sometimes a bad thing.

Leading up to Rosalynn's birthday, I was nervous. There were so many feelings and emotions that correspond with her day, and they were becoming overwhelming. I am sure that the new pregnancy hormones were not helping a whole lot, but it was also the pregnancy that was exacerbating these emotions.


April 20th loomed over my head, and to me it almost seemed like a jinxed day. I was terrified that I would wake up in the morning and this pregnancy would end, or some other tragedy would happen in my family. I don't know why I was feeling this way, probably just because my life will always be defined as "Life before April 20th 2010" versus "Life after April 20th 2010".

I didn't know what exactly to expect. If she was here on earth, we would have had a HUGE celebration with both sides of the family, friends of mine and all the kids her age too. However, how do you go about celebrating the short life in my womb and her death? Some people voiced their disagreement with a memorial/celebration. Of course, for those of you who have followed me and gotten to know me, or know me in real life, I choose to ignore people like this and do what I feel is right. I felt like she deserved a celebration and fortunately, most agreed.

Rosalynn has touched so many lives, more lives than some people who have lived for 50+ years could ever come close to touching, and for that I think she deserved a celebration.


I knew one thing, I did NOT want to be alone on this day. Foster had an exercise he had to attend for his unit, but said he would try to get off early, if not, we would have the evening together. I should have known at that moment that my family would never have let me go through this day alone. I think they needed me as much as I needed them. I didn't even have to ask, my mom and sister took the day off of work, and JJ got off around noon. I also got a call from my aunt saying she was coming in from NY to spend the day with us. I can't even begin to explain how blessed I am to have a family like this.

We made plans to spend time together in the local out door mall that boasts a grand assortment of restaurants and shops. We ate at one of my favorite places, California Pizza Kitchen, and spent some time wandering around the mall, not really looking for anything in particular, but just spending time with each other.

Mid afternoon we all stopped off at the party center store in order to buy a bunch of balloons. I had decided that with the loss of my daughter, I had gained a group of friends that I felt deserved a special gift on this day. All of the women from my baby loss community have been such and integral part of my healing, and I wanted to do something to thank them. We bought 31 balloons, 15 pink for the girls, 15 blue for the boys, and one red one for my Rosalynn. JJ, Bug and I spent the next hour writing the names of babies taken too soon from their parents on the balloons and taking pictures of all of them (which will be posted at the end of this post and can be clicked on to enlarge and copied for your own enjoyment!)

we had a few casualties of war!

Us girls hard at work with the balloons!

Rosie amongst all her friends!

Rosie and Ellie (my sister's old roomie and my first nurse who took care of me and Rosie...her niece)

The notes we attached to the balloons to send up to Rosie:

We headed out to the cemetery around 4:30pm where Papa JJ, my dad, Ky, Matt, Mrs. H with baby H, and Mrs. Compass, her 2 kids and her VERY pregnant belly, my oldest sister Jan and my niece Lish joined us girls for some prayers, balloon release, and champagne/sparkling grape juice toast. Others made out notes to Rosie that were also attached to the balloons.

The day was pretty windy, and had a chill in the air. It looked like it would rain any moment. I was afraid of the balloons getting stuck in the trees of the woods across from Rosie's headstone, so Foster, Ky, Matt, Mrs. Compass' daughter and I stepped out further away from the woods to make sure they made it over the trees. Unfortunately, 2 of the three bunches of balloons got stuck in the ONLY TREE in the middle of the hill!! OF COURSE!!!

We all had a good laugh about this, because it just proved that Rosie would have been more like me than we probably wanted. She and her friends did not want to leave the party!! They wanted to stick around, and be stubborn.

balloons in trees!

uncle Mr JJ climbing the tree to release the balloons

Papa JJ and Foster lead us in prayer and we even sang a happy birthday to Rosie. I have to admit, I had been really good up until this point! As the group sang Happy Birthday, the tears started streaming. This should have been a totally different scene.

beens" at that moment.

After a lovely gathering, the majority of us headed to Rosie's favorite place to eat, Max and Erma's. Mrs. Prince and I frequented this establishment multiple times a week throughout our pregnancies. Rosie LOVED the French onion soup and Cesar salad, so I ordered it. I also had sweet tea, although it has had a tendency of making me sick through this pregnancy, Pumpkin put up with it for this one occasion.

I was given many gifts this day. Cards, phone calls, texts, and things to remember Rosie by were given to me in abundance. I was even given over $170 from my mom's school to put towards Roses from Rosalynn!

Pumpkin wasn't left out either. My sister gave me something I had not seen in exactly 362 days. The card said "To my little brother/sister From Rosalynn". They were onsies that everyone made at my baby shower exactly 3 days before we gave birth to our sleeping daughter. My sister had kept them at her place so they could dry, and although I wanted them, I was never ready to actually see them. When I pulled them out, I started crying again. So many memories of my baby girl, and she never took a single breath here on earth.

Since the JJs had yet to see the new kitchen, them and Bug and Ky came back with us and my parents and aunt to the house to eat ice cream cake. It was the one thing Foster had requested. We skipped the singing this time, because I wasn't sure my heart could handle it again, and we all dug in.

After everyone went home, Foster and I headed to bed with the puppies in tow. It had been an emotionally taxing day, but it was a beautiful one. I had gotten the chance to spend time with some of the people that mean the most to me, and who love Rosalynn as much as I do. They all decided that we had to make this a tradition. We have to continue to get together and celebrate this amazing little girl who has touched so many people!

I know there are probably things I left out, but I think I cover the most important aspects of the day. Thank you to all of you who left messages on FB and this blog. Thank you to those who "attended" my FB virtual birthday event. These small things mean SOOOOOOO much to me, you will never know! Just knowing that some of you thought about her and us on April 20th meant the world to me!!!!  So to those of you who requested your baby's names on a balloon, here they are. Feel free to copy the picture and post it on your name pages/FB/etc.